


Shu-Torun Lives

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Category: Star Wars (Marvel Comics)
Genre: Gen, Politics, Royalty, Trick or Treat: Trick, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-06 06:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16383413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: "To survive on Shu-Torun, you MUST dance."





	Shu-Torun Lives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weakinteraction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/gifts).



 “Is this really necessary?” The Captain asked, taking deep breaths as he tried to keep pace with her.  While open defiance of the Imperials was wrong, Trios had learned to take a small amount of joy in pettiness.  The officer would not let either his superiors know how he struggled to keep a brisk walk with Queen Trios after a dance class.  Because a bureaucrat on Coruscant had no idea what dancing on Shu Torun was like.

“On Shu-Torun?  Of course it is.” She said, marching down a corridor into an open-air pavilion, looking down the railing at the glowing river of lava below.  The Captain reached her, leaning on the railing as he sweated through his dress uniform and tried to gain his breath. “Courtly functions are key to maintaining the situation.  As I said to you when we met, everyone must dance.”

Queen Trios was the best dancer of them all.  She wove between dissenting Barons, sowing a wisp of distrust that would keep them at one another’s throats before pirouetting away blameless in their internecine power struggles, but duty-bound to adjudicate them as ruler.  Then she did an entirely different sort of dance for the Empire, one with carefully adorned figures and reports.  She knew that they may not care about the Court of her home, but that she also knew they cared about the Ore, and you could not maintain production without placating her Courtiers.

Growing up in the Court of Shu Torun was a learning experience few in the galaxy would ever have, and those that learned their lessons dwindled constantly.  It took a special kind of person to thrive here.  The first lesson you learned was that a 'friend' was just as likely to kill you as an enemy, if their loyalties shifted. Queen Trios had very powerful friends. But she knew what kept them loyal to her; a steady stream of ore. Maybe, just maybe, the fact she had been coronated by Lord Vader himself, before the corpse of her father and the rest of the royals, also gave men like the Captain pause. Maybe it didn't. She was sure the ore did.

Once you realized that no one could be trusted beyond what you could give them, you had to be stubborn to exist on Shu-Torun.  The fact that this planet was inhabited at all was a testament to stubbornness of a kind that outsiders hardly found healthy. Holding balls and salons beneath a lake of magma was something offowrlders found offputting. Shu-Torun was built on stubbornness; enough to find a planet of fire and stone, where greenery only existed in hydroponics lab, where liquid hot metal was more common than liquid water, and call it home. All for the sake of the rarest and most valuable ores in the galaxy.

Yet not too stubborn, to dig to deep or reach too far, and burn.

Trios served her people and the Empire.  In a way, their interests aligned exactly; the Empire wanted as much ore as could be mined and her people wanted to continue living.  Satisfying the Empire’s needs kept her people safe.  She was not too stubborn to see that, despite what certain elements of her people felt.

She was viewed as a weak ruler at the start, the third child—third child who made it to adulthood—of the King, never meant for the throne.  Her purpose was to represent her father in matters below the notice of the Heir or the Celebrant Warlord, be married off for political reasons, or whatever was deemed appropriate.  Including laying down her life in service of the Crown and the Ore Barons.

It had been a minor miracle she reached maturity; if the planet itself didn’t kill her, there was always the possibility one of her elder siblings might wish to remove the third child in case she got ideas for self-advancement.  Or a Baron would arrange an assassination, some poison in a glass of wine, some accident while she represented her father. Killing the important children would be an act beyond all but the most treasonous Barons; killing the third would be an outrage but would demonstrate their umbrage at her father. Then, that third child inherited her Father’s crown when the rest of the royal family was slain by Darth Vader.  She hadn’t observed a vendetta, hadn’t refused to obey the Empire.  Therefore, the more stubborn among the Barons concluded, she was weak.  Maybe, on her own, she was.  But the Empire was invested in her success. 

The Empire was a great and mighty volcano, Queen Trios knew.  The Ore Barons, the ones who revolted against her, had seen it as essentially harmless to them, sacking their puppet and demanding a better deal made sense.  However, the Empire was not harmless, merely dormant, until they shifting plates and mounting pressure brought it to erupting, and it drowned the Ore Barons in lava.  Sometimes literally.

The Ore Barons were more pliant after that.  Having the traitors summarily executed and installing their replacements did that.  A weak child ascended to the throne when her powerful friend made it so.  After putting down the Ore Barons, she was that powerful friend, upending lines of succession. 

That had two purposes.  The new barons and baronesses owed their stations to her; some measure of respect for her position was required of them.  It also left a dozen disinherited heirs apparent biting their tongues, too afraid of Queen Trios and the Empire to raise a fuss.  Publicly.  In private, Trios knew they schemed and planned.  To retake what was theirs.

The family squabbles over who deserved the Baronies was beneficial.  Because it kept the nobility at each other’s throats, not at hers.  And they needed her.  Because she was the only one not too proud to realize what the Empire was and what it could do to their planet if the quotas were not met. 

And as dismissive as the Empire could be, they needed Queen Trios as well.  Like the Captain, they were all hopeless in navigating the courts of Shu-Torun, and as willing as they were to destroy delving citadels or crush resistance, they couldn’t keep doing that and hope to maintain productivity.  No one in the galaxy mined like Shu-Torun.  Yes, there were lava planets with mining outposts.  But no other place in the galaxy _flourished_ in the heat and metal like Shu-Torun.

So she danced. 

There was no one who knew how to dance like her, who was familiar enough with the Courts of her home to relate with them and get them to do what was needed but also who realized what was necessary.

She was Shu-Torun.

And Shu-Torun would live.

**Author's Note:**

> I picked up Marvel's _Darth Vader_ comics cheap on Comixology, and was blown away. It was a ton of thoroughly awesome Vader moments, as expected, but I loved the supporting cast. Trios having to juggle being the proper queen of her people with appeasing the Empire set an interesting balance, and I just love the ultra-decadent culture of Shu Torun, with super ornate palaces submerged in Lava, and the people are all decorum obsessed to the point of mouthing off at Darth Vader for not dancing, but display little regret over actions like trying to sacrifice their daughters.


End file.
